The Bub­ble

It has been a long ol’ pan­dem­ic – one that grew from weeks, to months, to years and now can be demar­cat­ed by two Judd Apa­tow films. The first – under­seen and charm­ing Pete David­son vehi­cle The King of Stat­en Island – was a warm and light­ly bro‑y com­e­dy that proved a wel­come dis­trac­tion from lock­down ter­ror. The sec­ond, made with Net­flix, is a big­ger depar­ture from Apatow’s sig­na­ture tone, adopt­ing broad­er absur­di­ty and wack­i­er antics.

The Bub­ble is a Covid com­e­dy in every sense of the word, inspired by the pro­duc­tion of the Juras­sic World Domin­ion where the cast and crew formed a pro­duc­tion-wide ​“bub­ble” and an entire hotel in Eng­land was com­man­deered for the shoot. In The Bub­ble a group of self-involved movie stars led by Car­ol Cobb (Karen Gillan) and young Tik­Tok star Krys­tal Kris (Iris Apa­tow) are trapped mak­ing Cliff Beasts 6 under the stew­ard­ship of pro­duc­er Gavin (Peter Ser­afanowitz) and direc­tor Dar­ren (Fred Armisen) and sup­port­ed by delight­ful Well­ness spe­cial­ist Bola (Sam­son Kayo) and Covid offi­cer Gun­ther (Har­ry Trevald­wyn) who des­per­ate­ly wants to make friends.

Like most Judd Apa­tow films and new vari­ant waves, The Bub­ble lasts too long. But sim­i­lar­ly they fall into a strange­ly hyp­not­ic rhythm. Trevald­wyn and Armisen suit the tone best, with tiny flour­ish­es of phys­i­cal com­e­dy, mak­ing ​“sweet eyes” in lieu of hugs or floun­der­ing while giv­ing a dis­qui­et­ing mid-swim hug. Gillan also nails the lead role, bal­anc­ing a mon­strous actress ego with the mad­ness of being trapped in a nev­er-end­ing shoot punc­tu­at­ed by two week in-room con­fine­ments where there is noth­ing to do but exer­cise, mas­tur­bate or, in Dieter Bravo’s (Pedro Pas­cal) case, get cre­ative with a com­bi­na­tion of the two.

The char­ac­ters quick­ly descend into mad­ness, evok­ing Eleanor Coppola’s Apoc­a­lypse Now doc­u­men­tary Heart of Dark­ness and build­ing to a fan­tas­ti­cal­ly sil­ly final act. Pedro Pas­cal as a John­ny Depp-esque drugged-up movie star infat­u­at­ed with Anni­ka (Maria Bakalo­va) the hotel recep­tion­ist is great fun, as are the musi­cal num­bers and the cult recruit­ing attempts of ego­ma­ni­ac action star Sean Knox (Kee­gan Michael Key). Though at times it feels like the edit is arbi­trary, mad­ness sets in ear­ly and has nowhere to build to but it does mean that less amus­ing turns from David Duchovny and Leslie Mann are book­end­ed with more suc­cess­ful jokes.

An over­abun­dance of celebri­ty cameos and some inco­her­ence aside, The Bub­ble suc­ceeds because it is just so damn fun. Even with a depar­ture from Apatow’s more mut­ed direc­tion there is an abun­dance of laughs. Tiny roles of stu­dio execs and agents on zoom are played by com­e­dy vet­er­ans like John Lith­gow, Rob Delaney and Kate McK­in­non that milk their brief moment for absurd gig­gles. While it doesn’t quite reach the heights of Christo­pher Guest’s hilar­i­ous mock­u­men­tary ensem­bles, a direc­tor wav­ing a bazooka at a heli­copter that can only go up and down should go down as one of the fun­ni­est things to come out of the pandemic.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them. Sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism by becom­ing a mem­ber and receive month­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions, exclu­sive essays and more.